If you were asked ‘what is society made of?’, what would you answer? Many might say ‘people’. But you can…

If you were asked ‘what is society made of?’, what would you answer? Many might say ‘people’. But you can have people, without having a society. A thread about ideas, and one particular idea that is destroying our socieities. /1

A society might be more accurately described as a set of relationships between people. That’s closer I think, but again you can have relationships between people without having a society. I’ll cut straight to the chase - the raw material of all societies is ideas. /2

It’s ideas that are the literal building blocks of all societies. Ideas are what people relate over. Look at any social interaction, and if you peel away the layers, it reduces to an idea or set of ideas. Ideas about family, work, love, about cars, about medicine etc. etc. /3

I’ve Tweeted before about how ideas are also not personal. They’re actually eternal, and shareable amongst millions of people, across generations. (Plato talked about this eternal nature of ideas a lot.) They have agency, they act, across generations. /4

For this reason a society that is functioning well is a society whose underlying ideas are in some sort of harmony. Ideas are the most dangerous of all things, some will literally kill millions of people if allowed (when they often get called ‘ideals’). /5

Have also Tweeted about why universities are so critical to societies. Universities tame ideas, they discipline them, bring them into harmony. One of the reasons for a growing lack of social cohesion is the development of ‘think tanks’, to weaponise ideas for specific ends. /6

These ends are not only antithetical to harmony with society’s other existing ideas, a think tank’s ideas are often designed to deliberately disrupt that harmony. To disrupt. Narrow focus, with a pure strategic aim of achieving some pre-determined outcome. /7

I think one idea or set of ideas not only explains most of our current social structures and behaviours, they also contain within them the seed of a continuous, corrosive undermining of society itself. Sometimes I call these ideas political libertarianism. /8

But stripped back to its essence, libertarianism is really one take on the age-old question of individual versus group. What is an individual, what is a group, and what relationships exist between them? I’m betting you’ll struggle to find any social or political issue…/9

…that doesn’t orbit this particular set of ideas. How you understand individuality and group will define you both socially and politically. Most of the debates we see in society are really only foot soldiers co-opted by different variations of these core ideas. Ideas act. /10

Libertarians see the individual as not only intrinsically separate to the group, some go so far as to say the group doesn’t even exist. ‘There is no such thing as society’ (Margaret Thatcher). Those of the ‘Left’ (labels are really only foot solider livery) on the other hand…/11

…often see the group as primary, with individuals subordinate to broader social requirements. Most of our politics is the ping pong between these two positions. A battle of ideas, literally, with human beings the soldiers each variant of the ideas co-opts. /12

I’d like to share an extraordinary take on these ideas. That of Gabriel Tarde. Tarde has been dead over a century, and his thinking wasn’t much noticed in his day. Tarde said that there are no individuals, and no groups. He rejected this set of ideas entirely. /13

Reading Tarde, you can literally gasp with the audacity of his thinking. It’s so unlike anything that came before him, or after him. It resets much of our whole framework for thought and life. I’ll focus only his thinking about individuals and groups here. /14

For Tarde, every group we see is comprised solely of the individuals that are members. But those individuals in turn already pre-share the characteristics that define group membership. Examples can help. A netball club. That club or group is made up of individual members. /15

Each of those members though share a commitment to playing netball, views on uniforms, refereeing, courts, etc. There is no magic ‘emergence’ of the group from the individuals. The shared DNA of the group’s interests (ideas about uniforms etc.) pre-existed the group. /16

In fact the group is a fiction, it always remains just these individuals, acting according to their already-shared interests. Anybody who has tried to run a club knows how strongly individuals in it hold on to their individuality. /17

You might think this makes Tarde a libertarian. Not on your nelly. Those shared interests are not individual. They’re ideas and passions and beliefs people picked up socially. There are no individuals either, because what constitutes an individual is just a particular slant…/18

…on a set of social, shared ideas. The group is just individuals, and individuals are just perspectives on shared, group ideas. Or in other words, there are no individuals, and no groups. Society is an interaction of different viewpoints on the same shared ideas. /19

Some use a chemistry metaphor to describe Tarde’s wonderful thinking. Just as water can exist in different phases - solid, liquid, gas - a group is just a different ‘phase’ of social life. It’s all water (individual people), but that water can sometimes aggregate, disperse,…/20

…boil over etc. People form groups for entirely individual aims, to make their lives easier. Many hands make light work. They never stop being that individual, even in a group. Libertarians are only the mirror image of ‘authoritarian’ States. /21

One pretends groups are the important thing, the other individuals. Both live in the fantasy that groups and individuals are distinct things. There are no individuals without groups, and no groups without individuals. Neither actually exist, they’re perspectives on ideas…/22

…that sometimes have wide scale, and sometimes none. We all know this intuitively, we feel our individuality, but we feel the raw material of that individuality as the things we accumulate socially: ideas, beliefs, feelings, etc. There’s no binary here. /23

Right now in a pandemic, we have those who argue for individual freedom from public health action, and those who argue for collective priorities. As a Tardean, I reject both. We need to focus on collective public health measures, to protect our individuality. Our ‘freedom’…/24

…is collectively generated (many hands make light work). But our collective effort is driven by our individual desires and beliefs. We act collectively to protect and strengthen our individuality. Again, no binary here. /end